


Full Dark, No Stars

by droid_girl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Horror, Lovecraftian, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-02-10 10:25:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18658543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/droid_girl/pseuds/droid_girl
Summary: ALTERNATE UNIVERSEIn the midst of fateful battle in the Department of Mysteries, Hermione's path takes a different twist.Falling into the veil with Sirius Black, the two of them find themselves in a strange place, filled with strange sights...and where the cost of magic is a price higher than either of them are able to pay.With only each other to rely on, the two of them make their way across a horribly familiar, yet utterly alien landscape, towards what they can only pray is safe haven...and home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Might end up never getting completed.

**Hermione**

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw as the spell flew at her, purple, vicious and terrifying in its palpable malice.

“Hermione!” A familiar voice yelled. The speaker was hoarse with exhaustion, that much was obvious.

 _Neville_.

Before she could register all that was happening, a heavy body slammed into her, and sent her sprawling to the ground, whereupon she _felt_ as a rib splintered underneath her flesh.

Overhead, Dolohov’s curse sailed harmlessly overhead.

“Need to…need to breathe,” she gasped, choking back a shriek of agony.

Rolling off her, Neville snatched at her hand and dragged her to her feet.

Gathering her strength, she began to run.

***

**Sirius**

Sprinting down the endless halls of the Ministry with his wand clutched tightly in his right hand, Sirius tried desperately not to picture the worse in his mind. Yet he could not stop conjuring a horrifyingly realistic image of Harry, pale and broken on the ground, just like James had appeared, back when…

“Pads, I need you to focus,” Moony hissed beside him. “I need you to promise you won’t be rash. I need you to be _sane_ right now, do you understand? Harry needs you to be…”

“I’m saner now that I was yesterday,” he retorted to his best friend.

That wasn’t a technically a lie. He _felt_ saner at any rate.

Arriving at a set of ornate doors, he waited impatiently as Kingsley muttered the cantrip that would grant them access. Running his fingers through his unkempt hair, he cast Remus a helpless look of utter desperation.

“If anything happens to Harry…” he started.

“Stop it,” Remus bit out tightly. “We can’t think that way,”

Off to the side, Tonks raised her wand as the doors cracked open. “Boys,”

Tilting his gaze, Sirius took in the sight of a battle just about lost…

Something leapt in his chest like a burning flame. Baring his teeth, he barrelled into the room.

***

**Hermione**

_It was amazing_ , Hermione decided as she ducked and rolled, _how the body shuts away pain at critical moments. Adrenaline truly was a miraculous thing._

Dragging herself to her feet, the witch found her gaze towards the sound of crazed laughter. Eyes widening, she watched as Sirius deflected a blast of bright green.

Behind Harry’s godfather, a stone archway gaped like a hungry maw; a tattered veil fluttered against an unfelt breeze, and to her eyes, it seemed as if the ghostly fabric was trying it’s best to grasp at the man standing only steps away…

Something about the space beyond those stone arches caused her hair to stand on end. Some eldritch, skin-crawling sense told her that whatever she was looking at, was as _wrong_ as it was ancient.

Snapping her gaze to the crazed witch advancing towards Sirius, Hermione saw the cold intention in Bellatrix’s wild eyes. In a flash, she could see the madness of whatever lay beyond the arch, mirrored in the less than stable twist of the older woman’s lips.

“Sirius…” Hermione rasped and began stumbling towards him. “Sirius get away from…”

“Hermione, _stay out of this_ ,” Pointing his wand at Bellatrix, the man crowed, “ _Expul…_ ”

From where she stood, Hermione could see that he was always going to be too late.

Lurching forwards, the witch shouted, _“Protego!”_. In doing so, she placed herself directly between Bellatrix Lestrange and Sirius Black.

Bellatrix’s curse hit her hastily erected shield, hard enough it caused her to fall back into the wizard she was saving…

***

**Sirius**

He hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected his godson’s best friend to leap between him and certain harm.

Without thinking, he reached out and seized her shoulders as she tumbled against him. Staggering backwards, his grip tightened instinctively against her flesh as they both fell backwards.

Wrapping his arms protectively around her head to stop her skull from smashing into the ground, Sirius caught sight of the rough hewn archway as both him and Hermione passed underneath it.

 _Clever bitch_ , he thought angrily, as he suddenly understood what Bellatrix had tried - and _succeeded_ \- to do.

As the ground met the side of his body, Sirius rolled to his right and released the witch in his arms. Climbing hurriedly to his feet, he hurried back towards the archway and began to smirk at the uncomprehending look of utter confusion on Bellatrix’s face. Behind her, the battle raged on.

Before he could take another step forwards for the sake of ending Bellatrix’s noxious existence once and for all, the scene before his eyes began very quickly to change.

Colour leeched away from his relative’s face, and her features grew more and more indistinct. Behind her, Harry strained towards Sirius, only to be held back from Remus.

“No,” Sirius murmured in horror. The room he was actually standing in was silent as the grave.

“No!” Hermione’s sharp voice echoed his sentiments as she righted herself behind him.

Harry’s emerald eyes, faded to a dusty grey, were the last things Sirius saw, as the world he knew faded to nothing beyond the archway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hermione**

With her heart in her mouth, Hermione rose to her feet and took in the sight of the hollow archway, from which no veil hung.

The archway peered out into nothing except more empty Department of Mysteries, devoid of her friends or her enemies.

Devoid of anything except a seething Sirius Black, who kept crossing the arch back and forth, and who kept swearing with every failed attempt to cross back into the place they had just come from.

“No,” she repeated again.

Her whole body ached. She just wanted to lay her head down, in her bed, in Gryffindor tower.

“ _You_ ,”

Whipping her gaze towards Sirius, Hermione noted the white hot rage in her companion’s eyes.

“I told you to stay out of it,” he started. “Why do you always, _always_ have to be so meddlesome? Would it kill you to listen every once in a while?”

“I…”

Sharp pain lanced through her side. The feel of it caused her eyes to squeeze shut, and caused her attention to become momentarily diverted. Reaching down, she grabbed at the place where it hurt. When she lifted her hand, it came away covered in scarlet.

“Hermione…” her companion’s voice became filled with a different kind of urgency. Footsteps approached her as the world began to darken further.

***

**Sirius**

“Hermione,” he gasped as he caught sight of flashing rubies running down the witch’s left wrist.

Not rubies.

Blood.

Dashing towards her, he caught her before she could hit the ground.

“I’m bleeding,” she breathed in surprise. Dark brown eyes darted up to meet his gaze.

“Fuck,” Sirius cursed.”Fucking hell you stupid little witch, why did you try to save me?”

“Habit,” she quipped, right before her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell away into unconsciousness.

Alone in a place that only _looked_ familiar, Sirius felt the first wave of panic as it overtook his senses.

***

The first time Sirius Black ever laid eyes on Hermione Granger, his first impression of her was that she was an annoying mass of swotty girl; she was a boring bookworm who talked far too much for her own good about things she didn’t understand.

Stalking his godson from a short distance underneath a disillusionment spell, for the life of him, Sirius could not understand why Harry chose to hang around the young harridan of a witch, who seemed determined to spoil the boy’s fun at every turn.

And he had continued being confused, right until the night he damned near got his soul consumed by a Dementor.

Standing in the tower he was imprisoned with, with her jaw set, and her curls unfurling around her like a halo of burnished gold, Sirius had wondered momentarily if the tales of avenging valkryies he had read about in his childhood were in any way true...

In the present, running through the empty, dusty hallways of a Ministry, halls of which seemed utterly devoid of life - enemies and allies alike - Sirius found himself praying to whichever god would listen that the woman in his arms was not in danger of losing her life for his sake.

“Don’t you dare,” he muttered breathlessly as his pounding steps echoed hauntingly through a myriad of darkened corridors. “Don’t you dare let go do you hear me?”

Against his chest, Sirius could feel Hermione’s breathe thrumming steadily, if shallowly. No doubt, what wound she had taken in battle was still hurting her, despite the fact that she was unconscious.

At the edges of his vision, in the shadows of unlit offices and cubicles, Sirius thought he registered the presence of still, looming figures…

Bursting into the atrium, the man froze as he took in the sight of a Ministry such as he had never seen.

Underneath a broken ceiling, destruction littered the marble floors. Wooden beams, concrete brackets, shattered stones...it was as if all the magic holding up the foundations of the building had disappeared into so much nothing.

The worst part of however wasn’t the debris; it was the thick layer of dust covering everything, and the occasional squeak of a rat squirming in and out of jagged crevices.

Whatever had happened here, had happened some time ago.

A _long_ sometime ago.

“Merlin,” Hermione’s reedy whisper reached his ears. “What happened here?”

Looking down, Sirius observed his companion’s wide-eyed expression as she too, allowed their new reality to sink in. As he somewhat anticipated, her legs began to jerk impatiently, albeit weakly, in a transparent attempt to be let out of his protective hold.

“Stop,” he shook his head to clear his mind of accumulating cobwebs. “I need to get you somewhere safe,”

“Where?” She demanded, and grimaced as her wounded side seized.

“St. Mungo’s,” Sirius stated without thinking as he forced his legs to move towards the main entrance. The second those words slipped past his lips, he realized with stunning clarity, that the Wizarding hospital might not even exist here.

Wherever _here_ was.

“Is that really such a good idea?” Hermione rasped, gazing about her in dubious fascination.

“Do you have a better one?” He demanded tersely as he kicked a set of doors open.

“Hogwarts,” she coughed.

“We’ll try the hospi…” Sirius’s words trailed off as he stepped into the world outside the Ministry of Magic.

A heavy fog hung over the street they stood on, so thick, he could barely see past the third storey of each of the surrounding office towers. Below the sluggish mist, the avenue waited in a kind of cloying silence that was practically deafening.

More large debris was scattered all over severely cracked asphalt. What surface wasn’t covered by rubbish, was taken over by weeds and sickly looking creepers. Rusting automobiles were stalled in various spots, some of them overturned, some of them rammed into other cars, or the walls of neighbouring structures.

“Sirius,” Hermione pushed at him now.

Limp arms allowed her to stand on her own two feet, though they did not allow her to stray far from him.

“Close your eyes,” Sirius heard himself saying into the overwhelming silence.

“I’m not a child,” the witch said flatly.

Flicking his gaze, Sirius watched as Hermione tightened her grip on her wand.

“This isn’t about what you are or are not,” he told her, and meant it. There were things in the fog he himself didn’t want to study overly much. Shapes and figures waiting in formations of quiet horror. “Close your eyes, and hold on tight,”

He observed the mutinous line of her mouth.

“Please,” he implored, wishing he could explain to her how much he wanted to shield her from the tableau which surrounded them.

Sighing, the witch’s eyelids fluttered shut as her left arm wrapped around his neck.

“Hold tight,” he repeated, and took a half step to the left.

***

The world swam before his eyes as they landed just past the entrance of the hospital.

Gasping for air, Sirius released his hold on his companion, and toppled over.

“Fuck,” he heard her swear.

“Language,” he choked out a small, almost hysterical laugh.

 

***

**Hermione**

Something was very wrong, she thought half-hysterically as Sirius rolled to his side the moment they arrived at the hospital foyer. Apparition did not cause grown wizards to collapse in on themselves. They did not cause men to literally fall apart.

“Fuck,” she muttered as she forced herself to ignore the throbbing at her side in favour of hovering over the greatly-weakened wizard.

Smiling an odd half-smile which did nothing to comfort her, Sirius quipped, “Language,”

“This is a hospital,” she thought fast as she hoisted his left arm over her shoulder. “We can fix you,”

“Fix me?” He asked in disbelief as he shakily complied with her efforts. “We’re here to fix _you_ ,”

“We can do both,” she sighed. Raising her wand, she whispered, “ _Point me_ ,”

Almost immediately, her sight wavered and her arms faltered. Had Sirius not regained a modicum of his balance, he might have been dragged down by her complete depletion of strength.

“I think…” he covered her weak fingers with his own, to prevent her from dropping her now-glowing wand. “ _I think_ we need to think very, very hard about the next spell we cast, before we cast it,”

Swallowing, Hermione understood the dire implications of his words.

 

***

Moving at an agonizingly slow pace, the two of them followed the gentle nudges of her wand as it lead them through an empty labyrinth of wards and hospital rooms.

“I never liked hospitals. In my experience, there has never been a good enough reason to be in one, Muggle or magical,” Hermione heard herself rasping as they passed unoccupied, uncomfortable looking chairs. Rumpled pallets had been tossed hither and thither through the hallways. Bedding and sheets lay crumpled and useless upon the ground, and everything smelled faintly of dry rot.

Humming his response, Sirius leaned heavily against her as they stumbled into a storeroom, the shelves of which were half filled with what appeared to be healing potions of all sorts…potions, and flasks filled with water. Sighing in relief, the young woman made to reach for the latter, only to find herself hissing in pain and pitching dangerously towards the ground.

“Don’t move,” Sirius admonished as he steadied her descent and lowered her gently.

Grabbing two glass containers from a high shelf, Sirius opened one of them and handed it to her. In quick succession, he availed himself to his own bottle. As Hermione slurped greedily at her prize, the witch eyed the gaunt figure before her as he too, sucked down much-needed water.

In the two years since she had met Sirius, the man no longer appeared half as crazed or as frightening as he used to. That didn’t mean however, that he was necessarily the picture of health. Even now, his skin and flesh was stretched tight over his lean frame, and his high cheekbones were terribly evident upon his face.

At least, she thought, Molly had managed to make him see to his previously rotten teeth, and had convinced him to shave off his matted beard. Somehow, the matriarch had even convinced him into trimming his previously unkempt hair…although admittedly, his locks still hung in shaggy, uneven chunks about his face.

“Drink this,” he shoved a bottle of what smelled faintly like _Skele-gro_ at her.

Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Hermione squinted suspiciously at the proffered potion. Setting her emptied flask down, she tried to ignore the ache in her side as she took the yellowish liquid from Sirius.

“It’s a healing draught. Trust me. I drank enough of it during my years as an Auror,”

The wizard’s tone was gruff, though his concern was unmistakeable.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Hermione took a deep breath, and tipped back the bitter concoction. When the last drop was gone, she found herself slumping backwards, with the empty vial in her hand rolling uselessly away from her.

Sighing, Sirius circled her prone body. Crouching down, and he slipped his hands under her arms and dragged her backwards ever so slightly.

“I should’ve mentioned - that potion sends you spinning into a death-like state for a few hours. Ironic isn’t it?” he asked wryly as he shifted her body so she rested against him.

“There’s no such thing as irony, just as there are no such things as coincidences," she murmured as her head lolled against his shoulder. The man felt so warm against her side. “All those concepts are figments of human conceit. For what it’s worth, I am sorry for dragging you into this place,”

“Silly girl,” he chided tiredly. “I was the one who dragged you past the veil, if you want to get technical about it,”

Allowing her eyes to slide shut, Hermione decided she did not possess the requisite energy to explain to him all the ways he was wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

**Sirius**

Propped up against the wall of the storage room Hermione’s wand had led them to, Sirius stayed awake just a little longer than his companion. 

Wherever the fuck they were, evidently, the place wasn’t so different from home that the necessities of life continued to function as expected. Unfortunately, it was just different enough, magic came with a steep price tag neither he nor Hermione could afford just then.

Tucking an arm around the witch’s shoulder, the wizard peered worriedly down at the slumbering witch, and found himself counting the cadence of her breaths as she inhaled and exhaled. 

Observing the faint lines by Hermione’s mouth, for the first time, Sirius wondered idly when the witch beside him became this thoughtful, brave young woman, who bore the weight of the world upon her narrow shoulders.

_I am sorry for dragging you into this place_ , she had told him earlier. 

With no small measure of shame, Sirius remembered his churlish reaction the moment he realized he would not be able to cross back into the other Department of Mysteries. He remembered how he had blamed her for his predicament, when really, he should have been thanking her for attempting to save his life from Bellatrix’s vicious attempts.

So what if she had failed? While it was true Hermione’s actions had resulted in the both of them being scrapped from the middle of a heated battle, while indeed, she had landed them both in a strange, somewhat frightening place, still, she had only meant to _protect_ him.

Tilting his face towards the speckled ceiling above them, Sirius tried not to think about what might have happened had Hermione not stepped between himself and his deranged relative…

When sleep finally found Sirius, his dreams were filled with darkness, accompanied by the sweep of cold, scabbed fingers sliding against his naked skin.

***

Sirius could not tell how long he slept.

Blinking himself into wakefulness as he stirred, he took in the sight of Hermione standing just off to the right of the storeroom’s only window. The woman was peering out that tiny glass opening, into that same damnable fog they had encountered the day before, the one which obscured just about everything from sight immediately above ground level.

“Not all of those cars are useless,” she said quietly, contemplatively.

“Good morning,” Sirius dragged himself to his feet and staggered over to her side. Unceremoniously, he spun her around, the better to study her condition. “You seem much better,”

“That healing potion took care of me,” she nodded with a small smile that seemed genuine, if not altogether assuring. Messy chestnut curls were pulled back from her face in a loose ponytail, which had the unfortunate effect of highlighting the fact that her cheeks were stained with dirt.

As if she read his mind, Hermione looked down and scowled at the sight of her blood caked sweater. 

“I bet if we look hard enough, we’ll find a change of clothes and more water to clean ourselves with,” Sirius squeezed her shoulders. “Maybe even some breakfast...”

“What do healers feed their patients anyway?” Hermione asked as he reached for her hand.

Something inside Sirius misliked deeply, the notion of somehow becoming accidentally separated from his only companion. Firmly, he began to lead the both of them back out into the hospital proper.

“Nothing good,” he shook his head. “I saw what they fed my father in his last days. Even for him, St. Mungo’s would not feed him anything but the rations they kept. It was cost effective you see, and each of those wafers they shoved down people’s throats met the nutritional equivalent of a full meal,” 

Together, they tread carefully through the messy hallway, and peered doubtfully into room after room. Smiling wryly, the witch sighed.

“When my grandmother was admitted to hospital for surgery, the night before they were meant to operate, they served her the worst meal I had ever seen in my life. The fish - if it were fish - looked like wet paper. The vegetables were brown...” 

“To be fair, it wasn’t a bloody wafer,” Sirius pointed out as they approached a set of double doors.

Something about St. Mungo’s nagged at him. Despite the debris lying all throughout the corridors, the building was still surprisingly intact, even if it was eerily deserted. True, some surfaces could have used a fresh coat of paint...

But then the hospital he knew, had always been a bit on the drab and faded side.

Pushing open the doors before him, Sirius stopped still for a moment, before a slow grin spread across this features.

“Employee lockers...there’ll be clothes in them,” Hermione nodded. “But how would we get into them? They’re all locked tight, it looks like,”

“Kitten,” Sirius flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Did anybody ever explain to you who I used to be in Hogwarts?”

After a moment, the young woman began to laugh.

***

They found more than clothes; they found two small, sealed tanks of water and fresh linens which seemed as if they would serve well as towels.

“We should take turns,” she tried to tell him as they entered the women’s bathrooms, though her gaze kept on flitting hungrily towards the container of water in her hands. “One of us should keep watch,”

The stalls before them offered them both the chance to complete their ablutions in private.

Rolling his eyes in her direction, secretly, Sirius balked at the thought that she might disappear forever if he let her out of his sight. Ridiculous and irrational as it was, the longer he stayed in the hospital, the more his skin crawled from some unnameable dread. 

“We’ll hear something coming long before we see them. Go on,” he nudged her towards her own stall.

Huffing indignantly, nonetheless, Hermione went. Striding into his own temporary compartment, Sirius focused on the cracks in the wall before him, the sliver of daylight he could see coming from somewhere…

What time _was_ it, he wondered as he began to unbutton his battle begrimed clothing. The light had yet to change from when he had awoken what felt like hours ago.

Wetting a square of cloth, the Animagus stretched his senses out, past the drip, drip, drip of water, past the sound of Hermione’s contented sigh as she began to wash in earnest. In the silence, Sirius listened for some distinct sign of life as he cleaned himself with short, mechanical gestures. Try as he might, all that greeted him, was the occasional squeak of a nervous mouse, scuttling about in the vents above…

Until the quiet was shrilly broken by the shriek of the woman in the stall beside his own. 

Spinning on his heel, Sirius catapulted his way out of the confining space of his cubicle. Dark eyes widened at the sight of Hermione leaping towards him, away from what appeared to be half a dozen centipedes skittering out of a nearby crevasse in the wall. Rushing forwards before she could slip and hurt herself, Sirius cursed loudly and repeatedly as he fumbled for his wand. Remembering belatedly how futile his actions were, he began cursing louder as his arms wrapped themselves around her waist and dragged her back from the fleeing, offending creatures. 

“I’m fine,” she breathed after a moment, clutching at him in a way that told him she was very much the opposite. “I’m fine. It’s just…so many legs. Merlin…I hate…”

“I hate those damned things too,” Sirius admitted as he forced his heart to slow. 

It took him a moment to understand that he was holding on to a very naked and rather damp young woman. The moment he did however, was also the moment he loosened his hold on her. Stepping away as hastily as he could, Sirius bumped hard into a row of marble sinks.

“Oh my god!” Hermione’s face flushed crimson. Wrapping an arm around her breasts, she fled back into her stall and latched the door behind her.

Eyelids slamming shut, Sirius did his best not to picture smooth skin, a pert arse, and a perfect set of breasts which would fit exactly right in the palms of his hands…

Goddamit, he thought to himself. This was the very last thing he needed - to accidentally perv on his godson’s best friend, who was stuck in a predicament of his own making, and who didn’t deserve to be ogled at like she was some piece of meat. 

An extremely delicious-seeming piece of…

_How thoroughly inconvenient_ , he groaned inwardly.

“Sirius,” her voice shook only slightly.

Forcing himself to remember he was a grown man, the wizard cleared his throat. 

“Yeah?”

“In the interest of teamwork and cooperation, let’s pretend the last three minutes never occurred shall we?”

The Animagus’s brain refused to release the image of water droplets clinging against honey-gold skin.

“Sounds like a plan,” he croaked. Swallowing hard, he strode back into his own cubicle, and began to dress himself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hermione**

Hermione fidgeted restlessly as she fussed with her hair before the mirror.

In her ‘borrowed’ jeans, her wand stuck out of her back pocket. Before her, upon the lip of a white marble sink, perched a small disposable toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste she had found as she rifled through the belongings of others.

Around the edges of her panic, the Muggle-born girl wondered distractedly if she could get Sirius to brush his teeth. At the back of her head, she could hear her mother’s voice saying in shocked, reasonable tones,

“It’s all well and good you’ve ended up in a frightening, parallel dimension, but dental hygiene should _always_ be a priority!”

Before she could burst out in nervous giggles, Sirius stepped into sight from behind her, looking far less begrimed than he had an hour ago. That easy grin of his appeared, as their eyes met in their shared reflection.

“Guess it’s time we went looking for something to eat, and talk about our plans on what we want to do next,” he observed casually, as if the two of them hadn’t just collided naked against each other.

All because she was fool enough to run from some stupid critters.

Admittedly - those critters had too many legs apiece for comfort, and she would have been shocked if the Dark Lord himself did not leap backwards in fright at the sight of those unnatural things. Though thinking about Voldemort only reminded her of her friends...

“Yes,” she said after a beat as her heart constricted.

Sirius’s smile didn’t falter. Instead, he waited patiently for her, with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his borrowed trousers.

“Teeth,” Hermione blurted out and tugged at her curls one last time before she forced herself to remember that there were more pressing priorities at hand.

“Pardon?” her companion’s smile faded. A small, confused frown creased his brow.

Realizing she wasn’t making much in way of sense, Hermione sighed. “We should find you a toothbrush so you can brush your teeth,”

“Oh,” he blinked at her. “Yes of course. How could I forget such a...a vital thing,”

“Quite,” the young woman's shoulders relaxed as she placed her hands on her hips. “Now go find yourself your own toothbrush from those lockers outside,”

Without any warning, Sirius burst out laughing.

After a moment, as she took in the incongruence of their situation, Hermione too began to smile.

***

Carefully, the both of them stole through the hospitals, gazing about them with a sense of growing disquiet.

“Everything in my head,” Sirius murmured. “Tells me we aren’t home. But everything I see seems...”

“Painfully familiar?” She asked quietly.

“The same even? It’s driving me slightly mad, this dissonance. But the one thing I can’t stop asking is where are all the people? And why can’t we do magic without hurting ourselves?”

Twitching her hand from her wand, Hermione kept her eyes focused straight ahead of her.

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is we find what we need from here, and find our way home. Harry needs us,”

“Of course he does,” Sirius agreed without hesitance as he pushed at a closed door. Twisting it’s knob, he continued, “But you can’t expect me to believe that you’re not even a little bit curi...”

As the entrance to the room swung open, and as light from the window behind them illuminated the space in its dreary grey rays, the words on his lips died to nothing.

“ _This_ is exactly why I’m _not_ curious,” Hermione choked out. Grabbing his elbow, she barely noticed as he twisted his arm for the sake of catching hold of her hand in a death grip.

Breathless and terrified, Hermione allowed Sirius to draw her back, step by agonizing step. For the rest of her days, the woman knew she would never forget the tableau which they had encountered in that awful, shadow moment...

A resounding noise from outside the window behind the two travellers drew their attention. Very slowly, Sirius and Hermione tilted their gaze to peer over their shoulders, at the world outside the hospital.

“Hermione,” Sirius sounded strangely dazed. “Do you see...”

“Yes, I see it,” Hermione answered. Unconsciously, she moved closer to Sirius as she studied the segmented shape in the fog, moving ponderously amidst the other ancient buildings of the city. Wherever the creature’s head was within the thick mist, Hermione wondered if it even noticed the two humans scuttling about underneath its wide steps.

She very much hoped it didn’t.

“Sirius,” She said quietly, urgently. “We need to leave this place. We need to try to get to Hogwarts…assuming it stands, or even exists in this place. That’s our best hope, I _know_ it is,”

“Why would you assume it stands?” He asked.

“Look around you! This place is empty and filled with…with things…but it stands untouched. Clearly, the protective wards of St Mungo’s are still working. If those work _here_ , then the even _stronger_ wards protecting the castle must still be in place!”

“But what or who do you even assume to find there?” Sirius demanded. “If there is a _there_ to go to. This isn’t home Hermione!”

“Do you have a better idea?” Hermione fired back as panic and dread filled her veins. The thought that her school did not exist in this place hadn’t occurred to her. But how could it not, when everything was an exact mirror of where they had come from?

Of course, there was also every possibility that Albus Dumbledore either didn’t exist here...or that he too, was as dead as what lay in the hospital room two feet away from them...

Before her eyes, Sirius hesitated. Just as she began to fear that they would both become lost to indecision, the man began to tug her away from the window, and away from the room filled with shapes which would forever be burned into her memory. Steps picking up, they hurried down yet another unlit corridor, looking for any indication of food supplies.

“We already know apparition drains our energy,” he pointed out as they flung door after door open. Stubbornly, the both of them chose to ignore the ghastly scene awaiting them in certain chambers. “How are we going to move between places,”

“I have an idea,” Hermione admitted. “I thought of it earlier when I was looking out at the street. The better question is, how do we protect ourselves without magic?”

Peering briefly at her, a bit of his usual cockiness returned. “If this place is as similar as I think - somewhat - to where we can from, if you can get us to 12 Grimmauld, I can solve that question,”

“How?” She raises a brow as they finally arrived at a room stacked with half-filled cases of unidentifiable packages.

Ignoring her question as he reached for one of the small, round things, Sirius ripped open thin wax paper and exposed a dry brown wafer.

“ _Cibas_ ,” he sounded grimly satisfied. “One of these biscuits will keep us filled and nourished for a day,”

“How will we bring them with us?” She demanded.

Glancing over at her, the man made a small noise of irritation.

***

As day slunk into twilight, warily, Hermione followed Sirius out the doors of the hospital. On their backs, they carried packs full of _Cibas_ , healing potions, pepper-up potions and water.

The backpacks they now wore had required a small amount of magic from each of them; indeed, they had started life as two wooden crates. The effort of such a small transfiguration task had left the both of them panting and exhausted for a full hour, before they could muster up the requisite energy to proceed with their rudimentary plans.

Slumped against the wall of the storage room, Hermione allowed herself to take a small measure of comfort from Sirius’s protective posture, as he wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders.

In the present, Sirius squeezed lightly at her hand as he asked, “Which car?”

“I told you to let me lead,” Hermione murmured impatiently as she dragged him towards a green Toyota, which reminded her of her father’s own vehicle...which was exactly the point.

“Are you sure you know how to operate one of these things?” Sirius asked as he glanced about them nervously.

Shaking loose his hand, Hermione looked about her for a heavy object. Spying a loose brick, she bent down to pick it up.

“When I was eight years old,” she hefted the heavy object in her right hand.. “My cousin Mark visited us one summer. He was eleven years old. And really, he should have known better. But that was Mark for you - he never knew when to stop,”

“Fascinating story but I don’t see...”

“Mark persuaded me that my father had given us permission to play in his car. I was doubtful, but I was also intrigued,” Hermione lifted her arm and smashed at the back window of the car.

The noise she made was loud. Far louder than she expected. Immediately, Sirius stepped close to her, and turned his gaze towards the sky as if at any moment, he expected a gargantuan leg to step before them.

“Sorry,” Hermione whispered after a while. Drawing in a deep breath, she waited a minute more.

Then, without offering Harry’s godfather an explanation of any sort, she reached through the shattered passenger window, and unlocked the door.

“What the hell are you playing at?” Sirius sputtered quietly behind her, as he regained his sense.

“This,” she said, as she ducked into the vehicle. Carefully, avoiding shards of broken glass which lay shattered on the passenger seat cushions - which would remain mostly unoccupied anyway, she leaned forwards and unlocked the driver-side door.

Tilting her gaze to the right, Hermione watched as understanding flooded Sirius’s eyes.

“Get in the other side, and hand me a Pepper-Up potion will you?” She asked with a small smile.


End file.
